Abstract

Skeuomorphs are material metaphors instantiated through our technologies in artifacts. They provide us with familiar cues to an unfamiliar domain, sometimes lighting our paths, sometimes leading us astray. Our computational methods are rich with many of these structures resurrected from past practices and borrowed from analogies in non-computational domains. Failing a general theory of how evolutionary processes relate emergently with one another across hierarchical levels through the media of DNA, culture, and technology, we should be curious yet cautious when we remove them from their natural contexts to use them in the artificial world of silicon.